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Delmar S. Larsen

Professor Delmar Larsen

Associate Professor

Ph.D. University of Chicago/University of California, Berkeley

The Larsen group focuses on exploring the ultrafast processes (fs to ns) of photoreceptors and other light sensitizing proteins which serve central roles in light activated biological functions. A fundamental, and yet unanswered, question for many photoreceptors is how the absorption of a photon by a small co-factor embedded within a protein is transformed into the complex response required for biological function.We explore how the surrounding protein modifies the chemistry of embedded photoreactions, including the evolving kinetics, reaction yields, thermodynamic and spectroscopic features with the aim of characterizing the hierarchy of reaction steps ranging from fastest local structural changes (femtosecond timescales) to slower long range conformational changes. This requires a multi-disciplinary research approach that incorporates tools from molecular biology, physical chemistry and computational sciences.